My Advice To Future Teachers

The best advice I can give future teachers is to never stop learning. The energy and passion that exudes from an active learner is contagious to students. When you are learning, you model this for your students.

Someone once asked me if I had a hobby. The only thing I could come up with was that learning is my hobby. I love to learn and I think this is important for all teachers to love learning and love BEING a learner. When I have met teachers who are not learners...it shows.

Rae learning about IBM computers at the Computer History Museum
in Mountain View, California.

When I was getting my masters I would come to my students each week excited about what I was learning. They were always ready to let me try new strategies and ideas. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. But, we had fun trying.

Once I took an online self paced course to learn Javascript. This was challenging and reminded me of the frustration my students sometime feel when learning new concepts. Never forget what it feels like to be a student!

I am out of the classroom now, but when I attend an EdCamp or other professional development I always come back and try something with kids.  Whether it is creating green screen videos, 3D printing or blogging on a new topic, I love sharing my learning with students.

Rae's new R2D2 Google Cardboard!

Recently, I have been learning more about Virtual Reality. I was able to try it while visiting Stanford University last month and I was hooked. A couple of weeks ago I got Google Cardboard Star Wars Edition. I tried it out at  home with my family and it was so awesome that I came in the next day and shared it with the students in my building. We spent over almost an hour that day trying out virtual reality apps and learning together. One student summed it up when he said, "You can't use Google Cardboard without a smile on your face'

That is my goal, more smiles on student faces.